Living the book of Job.

I'm not sure where to even begin this blog.

I guess the best place to start would be the beginning, as in all things.

Growing up, the word God was used in two contexts in my home... One as an expression of rage "God Damnit!" and two as an expression of surprise " Oh my God!!!!!!" Church was something the neighbors did on Sunday before we played. Catholic, Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim were adjective vocabulary words I learned to spell, nothing more.

One summer my babysitter enrolled her kids and me in Bible Study at the local Church of the Nazarene, not because she was particularly religious, but because along with Brownies, gymnastics, art classes, etc.. it was a way for her to have an hour a day to hear herself think. I remember sitting in my little pew and listening the stories of Jesus healing blind people and seeing all the other little kids nodding their heads and cooing "aaaaahhh" . And all the while I'm thinking... "Are these people out of their minds?"

And so my life went for about 12 years. Then all hell broke loose at home, as we've read in my other blogs, and suddenly my mom and dad are at 12 Step Meetings reciting the Serenity Prayer. And slowly the influx of Daily Affirmation books, incense, meditation cushions, books on contacting your inner spirit, and a whole slew of other previously unconsidered avenues to spiritual life start pouring into our house. And before long, at the dinner table we discuss our lives as journeys of the soul, rather than meaningless physical and material expressions of nothingness. Or rather, my mom and I discuss this curled up in her bed over bags of Jack in the Box and a tub of Ben and Jerry's. (Home life was bleak there for a long period after my dad and brother left, but at least we had each other and more importantly, we had for the first time, a spiritual perspective on our lives and questions about how to go deeper.)

And so began a period of try anything and see what sticks. My mom dove in full force, meditation classes, body healing work, a past life discovery group, a ouija board came in, pendulums, crystals, the Bible, books on Hinduism, gurus, the Divine Mother, Buddhism, What Is Enlightenment magazines, Carlos Casteneda... you name it, she tried it. And all of this trickled down to me. We'd discuss past lives and how they affected our current situations, we'd consult the ouija board to talk to our lost dog, we'd meditate before any big decisions and follow our inner guidance etc...

And the truth is our lives were blessed in this period. Things came into us miraculously. We always had what we needed and we were in the universal flow. There were challenges, certainly, but we saw them as lessons and negotiated them calmly and bravely.

Part of why we were so able to live this way is that we lived in a community and in a place that inspired this. We were in the midst of 2 Native American tribes and their culture and traditions were all around us. Our community was one that saw and respected its members. Just stepping out of your front door you were greeted with love from your neighbors. The local fashion was hiking boots, jeans and tee shirts and so much was placed on your love of life rather than on your love of physical beauty. And most importantly we lived in nature! Every morning we woke up to giant peaks growing out of our kitchen window and on Sundays we took drives out to the energy vortexes near our house. We were living in an environment that daily reminded us that there was a bigger organizing power present in every moment.

But the rest of the world does not live this way, as we were soon to discover. Starting with my year in France and continuing for the next 10 years in Los Angeles, my spiritual view of life slowly slipped farther and farther from my mind and the material/ physical life crept in to replace it.

I like to see what happened with this analogy:
It was as if the work I was doing spiritually was like laying bricks and wood piece by piece until I had built this really amazing house for myself. It was gorgeous and well made, and when I lived in this spiritual abode I fed things into it that enriched it further, tapestries of God and spirit, ottomans of love and faith, cushy sofas of kindness, feather beds of generosity, etc... But then I moved to LA and slowly my mind moved out of my beautiful spiritual home and the further I turned from it the more vulnerable it became. And before I knew it, these vagrants and vandals of bad habits and low thinking had usurped it from me. They came in and with them they brought jealousy, lack, poverty thinking, greed, anger, feelings of low self esteem, self hatred, drinking, skin picking, smoking, lust, vanity, etc... Until my entire beautiful house was jam packed with crap and there was no place for me or my spirit within it.

So lately, I have been reclaiming my spiritual home. I see that each time I push in a loving thought, a prayer, a day in meditation, an hour with a spiritual book, one of these vandals gets shoved out the window. There is no space in this house so each time I push something good into it, something bad has to be forced out. HEAVE HO!!!!!!!!!

So what have I been doing that's different?
Somewhere in here I just felt like I needed some new spiritual inspiration. So I went on Amazon and bought a few little pocket books by Yogananda (who wrote Autobiography of a Yogi, from my reading list- still highly recommended to start with). One of them is a little 35 page book called Scientific Healing Affirmations. It has proved invaluable.

Perhaps the largest information I received from this book is the concept of humans as a triuned being, looking for physical health, mental health (or emotional health) and spiritual health. Sigh! Yes! And recognizing that I have been so singularly focused on my physical health and perhaps slightly on my mental health, but that my spiritual health has been starved! And to recognize that from spiritual health all other health is formed. So how do I feed my spirit?

Among other gems of inspiration in the book is Yogananda's prescription for reason. He says that one must know and experience what he is learning, not just theoretically understand it, and he says to do this one must spend 1 hour reading (inspiring material), 2 hours writing, and 3 hours in reflection or thinking and if one spends these 6 hours in reason, one must spend the rest of one's time in meditation.

So I have been taking this truly to heart. I have been doing some version of this practice, not always the full 6 hours, but in the same ratio, even if I only have 30 minutes in a busy day, to spend 5 mins reading, 10 minutes writing and 15 minutes reflecting. I have added nightly and morning prayers and affirmations from the book to my daily life and slowly, slowly, slowly they are replacing my doubts, fears and incessantly cyclically focused thoughts about my skin.

I am reading a slew of spiritual material in my reading portions of time, a lot of it Yogananda, but also the Bible (thanks to Yogananda's language that has invited me into this book that used to intimidate me) and the Bhagavad Gita.

And what I have found for myself is a whole new way of being and thinking. First and foremost I think of myself as a spirit in a body rather than just a body. And that in and of itself is freeing a lifetime of anguish. I'm not even sure I can describe all the other changes going on, but from the moment I wake up until I go to sleep, I am experiencing great great change in how I live my life. And the world is responding.

Just a little example: when I began attending my yoga studio about 5 years ago, the owner of the studio and master instructor used to always pay me some special attention in the class. The studio I go to is massive and often there are 100 people in a class, but every class, this instructor would find a way to come over and adjust me, or crack my toes or brush up against me. It always made me feel special. (Don't get me wrong, this guy is amazing and does this for everyone in one way or another. He gives them what they need.) So anyway. When I had just started to pick at myself, one of the things he talked about while guiding us through the physical practice, was how we unconsciously do things without knowing it and he gave an example about how his girlfriend has to remind him that he's picking his nose. It made us laugh, but I remember thinking, "Oh my God! He knows what I'm doing!" Then as I got further and further into the picking and farther and farther from my bright little spirit, this instructor drifted farther and farther away... months would go by and he wouldn't come near me during my practice. In fact this is a microcosm example of what was happening all around me in my life, the people that loved me sort of drifted away and I was so lost in my own struggle that I didn't even really notice or care. So finally, here I am, back in this spiritual work and I got the opportunity to have 5 days dedicated to a yoga retreat. So I was doing my 6 hours on reason and spirit and while I was in yoga I was 100% focused on my internal spiritual life, running affirmations in my head and lost in my spirit. Suddenly, this instructor is over behind me and he is grabbing me in this really intense and very personal and intimate adjustment, he's circling around me and directing portions of the class at me and he's smiling at me after class. I also attended other instructors classes and it didn't matter where I was or who I was practicing with, the story was the same. One of these other instructors even picked a kirtan (Hindu singing of devotion) that was directed at Lakshmi (the Hindu goddess who hid in the milk of the ocean and when she reemerged she had a perfect complexion). So I guess what I'm saying is that when you take a step in this direction, of love and spirit, the world responds and encourages you to continue.

I see it on my walks in the evening, people are smiling and greeting me and I am feeling more love for them and from them than I have in years. And all of this translates to me feeling more love for myself, but more importantly a huge and great love of God.

And believe it or not, I'm even attending a service on Sundays. It is at a yoga ashram dedicated to Vedanta. Based on the Vedas, the sacred scriptures of India, Vedanta affirms the oneness of existence, the divinity of the soul, and the harmony of religions. The first service I attended I just sat in tears of joy and love feeling at last that I had found a community and a place to receive more support on my journey.

So all in all, I am here living one day at a time and turning more and more of my life over to faith, God and Spirit. Reading the book of Job, Job's love of God, loss of God in troubled times and returning to God in the end with more faith than ever before and God responding with more love for Job than ever before, and finding a story that resembles my own.

Sending you all love and peace on your journeys! Love, love, love!